Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature

"The Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature continues to forge ahead... it has given us not only excellent translations, but truly functional professional aids... which have made accessible texts that are truly worthwhile. We can only wish them well as they continue."

Ugo Zanetti, Bulletin de la Société des Bollandistes

English Translations

Volume I. The Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery

Translated with an Introduction by Muriel Heppell

The Kievan Caves Monastery was for centuries the most important Ukrainian monastic establishment. It was the outstanding center of literary production, and its monks served throughout Rus' territory as bishops and monastic superiors. The most detailed source for the monastery's early history was its Paterik, a thirteenth-century compilation containing stories reaching back to the monastery's foundation in the mid-eleventh century. Muriel Heppell's translation is the first complete English translation of the Paterik. With an introduction, a glossary of terms, and several appendices, Muriel Heppell discusses the work's Byzantine background and also sets it in the historical context of Medieval Rus'.

Volume II. The Hagiography of Kievan Rus'

Translated with an Introduction by Paul Hollingsworth

Among the finest products of early Ukrainian literature were the Lives of the first Rus' saints, including Ol'ga, Volodimer, Boris, Gleb, Feodosij of the Caves Monastery, and Avraamij of Smolensk. Drawing on Byzantine, Church Slavonic, and Latin literary traditions, the Rus' hagiographers fashioned religious narratives that were at once traditional and tailored for a specifically Rus' audience. These hagiographical works are now collected and translated into English in a single volume for the first time. Each Life is accompanied by an introduction and notes that discuss the saint as a historical figure and examine the hagiographer's literary portrayal of him.

Volume III. Lev Krevza's Defense of the Church Unity (1617) and Zaxarija Kopystens'kyj's Palinodija or Book of Defense of the Holy Apostolic Eastern Catholic Church and Holy Patriarchs (1620-1623)

Translated with an Introduction by Bohdan Struminsky

Bohdan Struminsky provides English translations from Ruthenian (Middle Ukrainian) and Middle Polish of these works, which have been published as Volume III of the Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature: Texts. The volume contains an introduction on the religious polemicists and their writings, a preface explaining the method and problems of translation, a full list of the sources used by the two authors, and indices of personal and geographical names as well as theological terms.

Volume IV. The Life of Paisij Velyckovs'kyj

Translated by Jeffrey Featherstone with an Introduction by Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos

Born in Poltava in 1722, Paisij Velychkovs'kyj attended the Kievan Mohyla Academy. After four years, he renounced secular studies in order to become a monk. He lived in various monasteries in the Ukraine (including the Kievan Caves Monastery), on Mt. Athos, and in the Moldavian and Wallachian principalities, where he died in 1794. Ca. 1748, a Moldavo-Slavic brotherhood began to gather about Velychkovs'kyj and to revive the Hesychastic traditions. Throughout his life Velychkovs'kyj avidly collected and translated Byzantine texts into Church Slavonic, especially works pertaining to Hesychasm.

The volume contains the texts of both Velychkovs'kyj's unfinished Autobiography, as well as a biography of the elder by his disciple Mytrofan. Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos's introduction discusses both works against their historical and generic backround.

Volume V. Sermons and Rhetoric of Kievan Rus'

Translated with an Introduction by Simon Franklin

The authors of the works included in this volume, Ilarion, Klim Smoljatic, and Kirill of Turov, are among the very few figures of Kievan Rus' literature whose names have come down to us. They were among the elite of their day, and their personal and literary achievements are remarkable. Ilarion was the first of only two recorded "native" metropolitans of Rus'. Appointed in 1051 by Prince Jaroslav the Wise, Ilarion is the author of Sermon on Law and Grace, the most outstanding work of eleventh-century Kievan Rus' rhetorical literature. Klim Smoljatic, the second "native" metropolitan of Rus' (from 1147), is best known for the learned Epistle to Foma, the only medieval Kievan document to address the issue of the proper nature and limits of Christian learning. Finally, the collection of sermons by the monk and bishop Kirill of Turov (c. 1130-c. 1182) constitutes perhaps the finest example of the art of allegorical commentary in Kievan Rus'.

Simon Franklin prefaces his translations of these accomplished works of Kievan literature with a lengthy introduction that places each of the three authors in their historical context and examines the literary specificities as well as textual complexities of their respective works. The volume includes illustrations, several appendices, and an extensive bibliography.

Volume VI. The Edificatory Prose of Kievan Rus'

Translated by William R. Veder and with introductions by William R. Veder and Anatolij A. Turilov

This volume consists of two of the oldest texts of Kievan Rus': the Izbornik of 1076 and Grigorij the Philosopher's Homilies on all the Days of the Week. The Izbornik is the earliest extant witness to the reception and subsequent transformation of Eastern Orthodox moral instruction that resulted from the transmission to Rus' of Bulgarian Slavic translations from Greek. The Homilies of Grigorij the Philosopher, translated for the first time into any modern language, is the earliest dated and localized Slavic text (Kiev, ca. 1062). These rhetorically artistic and sophisticated homilies provide a unique picture of an early Kievan preacher and of the moral needs of his Rus' audience. The Edificatory Prose of Kievan Rus' is an indispensable volume for all students of Slavia Orthodoxa in the eleventh century.

The early seventeenth century was a time of great upheaval for the Polish-Lithuanian state, as the Orthodox Ruthenians struggled to maintain their religious self-determination in the face of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. This book presents translations of polemical works written during this period by Meletij Smotryc'kyj, one of the leading spokesmen for Ruthenian renewal.

To make course adoption of these texts more affordable, we have priced those translation volumes without a paperback analog at the paperback price.

Text Series

Volume I. The Collected Works of Meletij Smotryc'kyj

Introduction by David A. Frick

Meletij Smotryc'kyj (ca. 1577-1633), was one of the outstanding figures of the cultural revival in the Ukrainian and Belorussian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This volume, exemplary of Smotryc'kyj's outstanding literary talent, reproduces in facsimile the original printed editions of ten surviving polemical tracts.

Volume II. The Jevanhelije ucytelnoje of Meletij Smotryc'kyj

Introduction by David A. Frick

Meletij Smotryc'kyj viewed his Homilary Gospel (Jevanhelije ucytelnoje, Vievis, 1616) as a crucial requirement for the "spiritual good" of the Ruthenian (Ukrainian-Belarusian) nation, and saw the need for an Orthodox collection of pericopes and sermons to supplant reliance on Polish Catholic and Protestant postils. This volume reproduces the original printed edition, one of the earliest works published in Middle Ukrainian.

The Union of Brest (1596), whereby a large part of the Ruthenian ecclesiastical hierarchy declared itself in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, sparked an intense struggle among Ukrainian and Belorussian Christians in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This confrontation was marked by a number of polemical works, of which Lev Krevza's Obrona iednosci cerkiewney (Defense of Church Union, Vilnius, 1617), on the Uniate side, and Zaxarija Kopystens'kyj's Palinodija (1621), a monumental defense of Orthodoxy, are arguably the most erudite, comprehensive, and persuasive. This volume contains facsimiles of the original printed edition of the Obrona iednosci cerkiewney and of a newly discovered manuscript of the Palinodija, which has never been published.

Volume IV. Seventeenth Century Writings on the Kievan Caves Monastery

Introduction by Paulina Lewin

The Kievan Caves Monastery played a leading role in the development of a Ukrainian historical consciousness in the seventeenth century. Particularly important was the link between the monastery's medieval past and its early-modern present. Several works written by inhabitants of the monastery testified not only to the site's former saints and miracles but also to its current holy men and women. This volume contains facsimile reproductions of two such works: Syl'vestr Kosiv's Paterikon (Kyiv, 1635), a Polish translation and expansion of a medieval Rus' text; and Afanasij Kal'nofojs'kyj's Teraturgêma (Kyiv, 1638), a continuation of Kosiv's narrative. In addition, an appendix contains Johannes Herbinius's Religiosae Kiovensis Cryptae (Jena, 1675), a work based on firsthand data supplied by the archimandrite Innokentij Gizel'. In the introduction, Paulina Lewin examines the cultural context of these works and discusses their literary significance.

Volumes V, VI. The Diariusz podrozny and Other Writings of Pylyp Orlyk

Introduction by Omeljan Pritsak and Orest Subtelny

Elected successor to Ivan Mazepa in 1710, Hetman Pylyp Orlyk led the Ukrainians who emigrated after the battle of Poltava (1709) in the struggle against Russian rule. His diary, spanning the years 1720 to 1733, is an invaluable guide to Orlyk's personality, politics, and travels. The Diariusz podrozny has never been published in full; these volumes contain a facsimile reproduction of the entire preserved portion of the original manuscript. The introductions by Orest Subtelny and Omeljan Pritsak survey details of Orlyk's life, the diary's contents, provenance, and place in Ukrainian historiography.

Volume VIII. The Old Rus' Kievan and Galician-Volhynian Chronicles: The Ostroz'kyj (Xlebnikov) and Cetvertyns'kyj (Pogodin) Codices

Introduction by Omeljan Pritsak

In ca. 1307, three Old Rus' chronicles--the Povest vremmenyx let (Tale of Bygone Years, covering the years 872-1117), the Kievan Chronicle (for the years 1118-1199), and the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle (for the years 1205-1289)--were joined together. These three component parts have come down to us only in the form of a compilation (datable to ca. 1425) which scholars have named the Hypatian Chronicle.

Of the five extant witnesses of the Hypatian Chronicle, the so-called Xlebnikov codex occupies a special place. It was most probably copied in Volhynia during the second half of the sixteenth century for Prince Kostjantyn Ostroz'kyj.

The so-called Pogodin codex, closely related to the Xlebnikov, was copied in 1621 in Zhyvotiv for Prince Stefan Chetvertyns'kyj.

Both the Ostroz'kyj and Chetvertyns'kyj codices appear here for the first time in facsimile. Until now they have been known only from footnotes to editions of the Hypatian codex.

lxl, 762 pp., ISBN 0-916458-37-7 (clothbound) (HUP/PRIOLD) $15.00.

Volume IX. Hryhorij Hrabjanka's The Great War of Bohdan Xmel'nyc'kyj

Introduction by Yuri Lutsenko

Hryhorij Hrabjanka's The Great War of Bohdan Xmel'nyc'ky is one of several Cossack chronicles that transformed the nature of Ukrainian history writing in the early eighteenth century. Written in 1710, Hrabjanka's chronicle deals with the revolution of Hetman Bohdan Xmel'nyc'kyj and its aftermath. Yuri Lutsenko, of the Institute of Literature of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, demonstrates in his introduction that the work is not so much a chronicle in the traditional sense of the word, but rather a well-written dramatic account of events intended to glorify the achievements of the Cossacks. The present volume contains facsimiles of two manuscript versions of the chronicle, as well as of two published versions that have become bibliographic rarities.

Donald Ostrowski, ed. and coll., with David Birnbaum and Horace G. Lunt

The Tale of Bygone Years (Povest' vremennykh let) is the most important source for the history of early Rus'. Full of stories of grand princes and saints, monks and knightly retinues, this chronicle compilation has been the bedrock of modern interpretations of the history, ethos, and religious traditions of Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians alike. It has also been a source of controversy, with competing redactions and interpretations of the Old East Slavic language in which it was written. Ostrowski's massive undertaking provides scholars and general readers with the five oldest redactions, three more modern redactions, three later interpolations, and his own final interpretation of the Povest'.